Grand Canyon R2R2R

Sometimes, I go out and have a nearly perfect day.  The weather is good, the body is good, and the head is good.  Nature seems to be good to me.  Things click.  And when I return, I want more.  I want to go replicate it, again.   But sometimes, I go out and have a really crappy day.  I find misery.  I hate that I am in nature.  And I want nothing more than to never go out again.  And when I return, a cloud hangs over me, and I want another chance.  I want to be better.  It's a vicious cycle.

October 3, 2011, 7:04 a.m.


My sleeping bag is crumpled up in the back of my Subaru.  I crawled out of it a few minutes ago.  I'm nibbling on a leftover Subway sandwich from last night.  Jason is soaking a ProBar in peanut butter.  We intended to have bagels, but we don't.  It's 38 degrees.  We strip off our jackets, slam the Subaru's doors closed, and start running off the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.

Jason Dorais descending off the North Rim.

Me off the North Rim.  Photo by J. Dorais

October 3, 2011, 9:35 a.m.


We've covered 13.7 miles and descended over 5,500 feet in about 2.5 hours.  Except for two rolled ankles--one mine and the other Jason's--we're feeling relatively good, not as fresh as we'd hoped, but good.  We're more or less on pace.  We want to run Rim to Rim to Rim, 42ish miles, and 10,800 vertical in under 10 hours.  We're at Phantom Ranch, less than a mile from the Colorado River, and will be heading up the South Kaibab Trail to the South Rim, ascending 5,300 vertical feet 7.2 miles.  If we want to stay on pace, we'll need to be at the top of the South Rim in 1 hr and 50 minutes.

Jason ascending the South Kaibab Trail

Me ascending South Kaibab.  Photo by J. Dorais.

October 3, 2011, 11:25 a.m.


It took us 1 hr and 51 minutes to ascend the South Kaibab trail from Phantom Ranch.  And it wasn't easy.  Perhaps we were driven too much by theory and not reality.  I felt a surge of adrenalin in the last 1/2 mile or so and we ran hard to the top, arriving breathless.  Although water was available at the South Rim, I only splashed it on my head, and didn't put any into my hydration pack.  I thought I had enough to get me to Phantom Ranch.  I didn't want to carry extra weight.  I was mistaken.

Me walking behind the behinds of a mule train.  "Please don't kick me."  Photo by J. Dorais.

October 3, 2011, 12:23 p.m.

We just ran the 27th mile in 9 minutes 30 seconds.  The Colorado River is below us and we'll be crossing it soon.  It's hot.  I'm hot.  I'm out of water.  I haven't eaten much of anything for an hour.  I notice that I have goosebumps.  I'm hot, but I'm chilled.  I'm nauseous and I can't eat.  Uh oh.  Not to worry though, we'll be to Phantom Ranch soon.

October 3, 2011, 12:45 p.m.

I'm lying face first in a tributary of the Colorado River.  My feet are propped up on a flat rock, but everything from my ankles up, head included, is under water.  Water trickles into my ear, but I don't want to lift my head out of the cool water.  I

October 3, 2011, 1:00 p.m.

We're satisfied that we clicked off 29ish miles in under 6 hours.  We've got 13 more to go, mostly uphill.  Phantom Ranch lemonade tastes good.  My goosebumps are gone and I'm not as nauseous, but I feel like, well, I just ran 29 hard miles.  I firmly believe that my condition will turn around from here out.  It's not unlike anything I've experienced before.  I'll pull out of it.  Just need to get on top of my eating and drinking.  My legs will come around.

October 3, 2011, 2:00 p.m.

Self assessment: no power in legs and nauseous.  I need to eat to have power.  But eating makes me want to throw up.  I've tried several times, heaving without much success.  A little bit, but not much. I run a few steps, and then am relegated to walking.  I really ought to eat.  But I can't.  It's as if there is an impermeable barrier between my stomach and my legs.  They aren't working together.  So I settle with walking.  I don't like going this slow.  I look at my watch.  I'm doing a 16 minute pace when I ought to be doing a 11 minute pace.  Jason is probably bored.  We're not going to make our goals, and it will be my fault.  He tries to feed me a gel, but I reject it.  I need to speed up.  But I can't, because I have no power.  Because I can't eat.  Faster.  Eat.  Heave.  I am miserable, trapped in an odd paradox.  This sucks.  I encourage Jason to go on without me.

October 3, 2011, 2:30 p.m.

Jason is running away from me now.  I hope he goes under 10 hrs.  He's looking good.  He will.

October 3, 2011, 3:30 p.m.

There is one hope.  I have a secret weapon: Coca Cola.  I stashed a 20 oz bottle six miles off the North Rim. This should turn my legs around.  Carbonation, sugar, caffeine.  Eagerly, I un-stash my stash, open it, and drink.  Immediately I feel better.  I up the pace.  A few minutes later, I am successful where I have failed so many times on this adventure:  I bend over and vomit.  The color of the spew is alarming.  It's blackish.  But then I let myself taste it a little bit.  And it tastes like Coke.  I'm back to my painfully frustrating and slow 25 minute pace.  My secret weapon failed.  I've got nothing.

October 3, 2011, 4:45 p.m.


I'm resigned now.  That internal fire, the incessant motivation to go fast and conquer, is gone.  I just want to get back to the car and be done.  And I want to throw up.  I look around and am stunned by the view.  There is a mist above the rim; water trickles off the walls above me; thunderheads move with curious speed across the canyon.  I start reciting ancient time periods I learned in 7th grade: precambrian, paleozoic, cenozoic, cambrian, ordovician, silurian, devonian. . . .




October 3, 2011, 5:15 p.m.


As I begin to see where I am, I forget where I want to be.  I start to eat almonds, slowly, one at a time.

October 3, 2011, 5:45 p.m.

My body seems to have accepted the almonds.  Jason, who finished an hour ago, has walked down to join me.  I look at my watch and 10 hrs and 50 minutes have elapsed.  I'm not going to take more than 11 hrs.  The fire is back.  It's late, way too late actually, but it's back.  I start running.  I run into the North Rim parking lot and stop my watch: 10:57:22.

October 3, 2011, 7:00 p.m.


I just threw up a bit, but I'm holding it in my mouth.  I roll down the car window, spit, and it spatters on the car, inside and out.

October 4, 2011, 12:00 a.m.

Me:  I don't feel a need to go back there.  Do you?

Jason:  No.  I'm not going back.

Me:  Me neither.

October 4, 2011, 6:00 p.m.


Me:  I want a rematch.

Jason:  With me?  Or the Grand Canyon?

Me: The Grand Canyon.

It's a vicious cycle.

Storm Mountain and Lone Peak Adventures

The last couple weekends, I've enjoyed getting out with some climbers.  Generally, the steeper you go, the slower you go.  Hoping to avoid long drawn out boring ordeals, i.e. belaying, Sam and I scrambled up the NW face of Storm Mountain carrying a 30 m rope and a few select pieces of gear.  A week later, Jason Dorais power hiked up to Lone Peak Cirque, climbed the Central Thumb, and then ran back down.  Working some aerobic effort into the equation made the belay time worth it.

This pic was taken in May 2011.  In that month, I tried three times, unsuccessfully to get up some unconventional routes.  Sam and I went up one of these unconventional routes without much of a hitch.

Sam about to scramble up some Class A choss. 

Stairs is terrifying in the winter.  And mildly mysterious in the summer.  Cool slabs.

Lower Stairs

Jason Dorais looking up at the first snows of 2011-12.

And pointing at our destination: the Central Thumb

Jason leading up to the crux.

The final pitch involves a slight downclimb and a funky (scary for me) traverse.

After climbing through iffy weather, it cleared up.  Took this on our way down.  From here, we basically ran.  And for future reference, it took us 1/2 hr to descend from the summit to the cirque (scramble and 2 raps); and then from the cirque to the Ghost Falls TH in about 1 hr 30 min.

Lone Peak--Several Times, According to my GPS

My GPS tracks wherever I go.  And it provides an accurate account of what I've done.  Which is why it must be true that I climbed nearly every route (established and heretofore not established) on Lone Peak's summits, yes both of them, in about 4 hours.  Here are my data points to prove it:

All the points I hit on Lone Peak in the span of about 4 hours.

And in case you want to verify:

I'm trading up for a Snoopy watch.

This essay challenged me. Very true, I think.

"The irony I cannot get away from is this: the energy and passion that call to our very core fill us with a life force that seems endless, but yet they also create a form of blindness to the ultimate reality we so dearly feel we touch."


Kayaking - Adding Death into the Equation

Kid CX Practice

It feels like CX season.  So, my kids have been practicing their mounts.  My 2 yr old, Hiro aka "Buster," pretty much has it nailed (slight bobble on the second mount).

Mount Whitney: The Double

I'm fortunate enough to work with a few guys who like an adventure every now and again.  In the past, we've done bike rides, marathons, Rim to Rim.  Last week, our group set out to hike Mt. Whitney.  Whitney is the tallest peak in the lower 48, and because of its popularity, to be in its vicinity requires winning a lottery and securing a backcountry permit.   So, in the span of 56 hours, we flew to Vegas, drove to Lone Pine, CA, climbed Whitney, and then reversed the same.


Round 1: The Mountaineer's Route


My work group wanted a challenge beyond the more conventional Whitney Portal Trail, so we chose the Mountaineer's route, a route that ascends about 6,000 vertical in 6.5 miles.  Much of the route is a Class 2 and 3 scramble.  To those who are somewhat close to me, you should know that I was appointed the mountain guide for the day.  That is because I am a mountain guide, just one that gets lost every now and again and lacks the certain inconsequential paper credentials.  I committed that I would get the group to the top; after that, I had a plan of my own.

En route, we had a few odd diversions.  While crossing over a ledge section in the early morning light, Barry broke into song:



The shenanigans diminished as we climbed higher and as the scenery became more serious.  And soon, we were on the Mountaineer's Route.  Most of the guys in the group didn't have a whole lot of climbing experience, but they persisted and at around 1 pm (and about 6.5 hrs of hiking), we stood on the top of Mt. Whitney.

The Mountaineer's Route goes up the saddle, and then to the top of the peak in the shadowed area.
The lake (Icerberg Lake) was frozen on the top!

Josh, Barry, Jeremy, Nate, Sam and Joe (Barry's two sons) on the saddle, about to go up this:

Ice!

Round 2:  The Whitney Portal Trail

At the top of Mt. Whitney the first time, I parted ways with my group and went back down the Mountaineer's Route.  The rest of my group descended the 11 mile Whitney Portal Trail.  Running down the steep Mountaineer's Route was a bit tedious and somewhat strenuous.  I was back at the car about 1:45 after I left the top of Whitney.

At the car, I reloaded my pack with food, drink, and a headlamp.  I left behind all the extra stuff, like my camera and jacket, which I later regretted.  And then I headed back up the Whitney Portal Trail.  It was 4:00 pm in the afternoon.  At 8000 feet, it wasn't too hot, but slightly uncomfortable.  I had been on my feet for almost 9 hours, and they had traveled 13 miles and 6000+ vertical over some pretty rugged terrain.  I had a solid 22 miles and 6000+ vertical ahead of me.  And Whitney looked like it was really really far away.  And I almost became discouraged.  I kind of wanted to just call it a day.

But then I took a sip of the warm Coke that I was holding.  And I reasoned to myself that flying and driving 100s of miles and getting a permit to do 13 miles simply didn't make sense.  And so I started jogging.  I stopped thinking of where I wanted to go, and just focused on where I happened to be.  Then I turned on my Ipod and was greeted by none other than Jon Bon Jovi.  And from "Bad Medicine" on, everything made sense.  All sense of tiredness, discouragement, and the cold I'd been nursing seemed to rest.  And I ran.

As I ran, I watched my Garmin report a set of 15 minute miles, then a set of 20 minute miles, and then as I climbed above 12k, I had to walk, especially up the 99 or so switchbacks (that's not an exaggeration).  At the top of the switchbacks, where the High Sierra and the John Muir Trails become one, a sign informed me that I had just entered Sequoia National Park.  I wondered what it would be like to run or ski all or part of either of these trails, and was stopped short in my tracks as the Sierras -- all the way to Yosemite -- came into view.  But, alas, no camera.

At this point, the euphoria of Coke, Bon Jovi, and Zen thinking began to wear off.  It nearly completely dissipated as the summit of Whitney appeared waay waaay out there.  Luckily, the 14k 2+ mile traverse to the summit is probably one of the most scenic in the US, and so it went relatively quickly.

About 3.5 hrs after I began Round 2, I stood on top of Mt. Whitney for the second time of the day.  I hung out for a few minutes, talking with some French climbers who were spending the night at the summit.  They had done a bit of rando racing in Europe and told me about some of their trail races.  Of course, they mentioned the UTMB, something they obviously took pride in.

The 14k traverse was better in reverse.  It was downhill and very runnable.  And I happened to be running it just as the sun was setting, in the alpenglow.  On the right, several thousand feet below me was a valley dotted with high alpine lakes, and beyond that was Sequoia and Yosemite.  To left was a very steep granite face, huge spires and an occasional steep couloir; at the bottom was a glacial lake, and the lights of several backpackers.

Concerned that the temperature was dropping and that I wasn't carrying a jacket, I stopped to pick up someone's dropped glove.  With a bit of trepidation, I sniffed it to make sure that was just a dropped glove, and hadn't been used for some other purpose.  It didn't have that smell, but it smelled heavily of some deodorizer or fabric softener, which reminded me of the deodorizer used in Honey Buckets, and which, in turn, caused me to quickly drop it and risk 2 cold hands on the descent instead of just 1.

As I descended the 99 switchbacks, it got darker and darker, and then black.  By then, my Ipod was pushing out some mellow baroque chorale pieces, but I shut it off and turned my head torch on so that I wouldn't run off a cliff.  The darkness was a hindrance in descending, and I found that my downhill mile splits were about the same as my uphill mile splits.  But other than that, I was in a good place mentally and physically.  I was pleasantly surprised that it was about 10:00 p.m., I had been going all day, and that I was still running in the mountains with relative ease.

It was about that time that I encountered a backpacker, carrying a big backpack and an ice axe.  When I approached he said,

"Man, am I glad to see you!  I was seriously worried about you when I saw you coming up the switchbacks so late in the day.  I had flashes in my mind about seeing a newspaper article about a dead Japanese tourist on Whitney, wearing just a t-shirt."

I laughed and apologized for causing him to worry.

"How far did you get?"  he asked.

"Oh, I went to the top."

"I'm astounded.  Really, I am."

And I suppose I should have let our conversation end there.  But I didn't.  The braggadocio in me spilled over, and I said, "And that was my second time."

"In your life, he asked?"

"Nope, today."  He was very complimentary, and that felt good.  We went on to talk about his trip and where he was from.  And then I continued on.

The last 3 miles of the Whitney Portal Trail are pretty cruiser, even in the dark.  After a small detour where I ran to Lone Pine lake and stumbled into some sleeping backpackers who pointed me in the right direction, I was able to open it up.  My Garmin showed a 13 minute mile, then a 12 minute mile, then a 10 minute mile.  And then, after 35 miles, nearly 13k vertical, and 16 hours on my feet, I was back at the Whitney Portal Trailhead.

Running Heart Mountain

View of Heart Mountain from Japanese Internment Camp

Last week, my family and I made a pilgrimage of sorts to Heart Mountain, Wyoming.  Heart Mountain is near Cody, Wyoming.  It was beneath Heart Mountain that my grandparents on my dad's side spent some years in a prison camp aka internment camp because they happened to be of Japanese descent and living near (meaning within several hundred miles of) the West Coast when Pearl Harbor was bombed.  As a child, I visited Cody, Wyoming and got a sense of where Heart Mountain was.  This time, I took my children to Heart Mountain, and I developed a much keener sense of what Heart Mountain was.

Exhibit at the new Heart Mountain
Interpretive Learning Center

The reason my family chose this time to visit Heart Mountain is because of the opening of the Heart Mountain Interpretive Learning Center.  We attended the dedication of this memorial and heard from the likes of Tom Brokaw, Senator Daniel Inouye, Congressman Norman Mineta, and Senator Alan Simpson. Among other things, these men commended the internees of Heart Mountain for their response to the injustice done to them by their fellow citizens and their own government.  They encouraged those present to see that such an injustice never occur, again.

I was heartened to hear the speeches given by these men, but nothing had more of an impact on me than just being there.  Although Cody, Wyoming is one of the gates to Yellowstone, in August, it is sun scorched and burnt yellow.  It's desolate.  I've heard it's that way in the winter too, just whiter and colder.  I imagined what it would have been like to be herded onto a train, and then after a 3 day ride with the shades drawn, walk out onto the platform to see Heart Mountain.  I imagined what it would have been like to be fenced in with Heart Mountain looming in the distance.  I imagined what it would have been like to live in a tar papered barrack with my small children during the fierce Wyoming winter.

I doubt my grandfather or grandmother ever climbed Heart Mountain.  While they were interned, I'm sure they had other things weighing on their mind, like whether a Stanford degree would ever be useful in their world, what might they would do if they were ever released, or whether they really were second-rate citizens. And on top of that, there were the barbed wire fence and machine gun towers.  I suppose those would have impeded a run to Heart Mountain.

So it was with a sense of gratitude that I ran up to the top of Heart Mountain.  Yet, I suppose there was also a sense of confusion.  Why is it that I am able to run free, but others cannot?  And at the same time, I was saddened; sad because my grandfather was unable to express the kind of freedom I feel running, unimpeded to the top of a mountain.

I will never know endurance and suffering like my grandparents knew it.  But I know that without it, I will not be complete.

L to R: me, White Brother Mark, Brother Aaron, Uncle Roman, White Brother Danny
Because of a jam-packed day, our only opportunity to run Heart Mountain did not come until it was dark.